


Elysium

by vegetablemonster (Druddigonite)



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Character Study, Gen, can be emilalli if you lean that way, can be entirely platonic if you don't, wow look it mentions Tuuri again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-26 23:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16690996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Druddigonite/pseuds/vegetablemonster
Summary: They've come so far. And some things change, while others stay the same.(Reflections of the SSSS crew during quarantine)





	Elysium

The artificial light of the quarantine rooms burns his eyes. Mikkel supposes that after surviving for months in the Silent World, a sudden reintroduction to technology could have that effect. It was the same with Kastrup, the same all the others. After fighting the mangled bodies of trolls and seeing his friends and family die to their jaws, sleeping on a clean cot enclosed by glass walls felt surreal. As if everything before had been a dream. 

Except it wasn’t. People die; what remains of their bodies is buried along with their memories. Sometimes nothing can be recovered, and they have to conduct a funeral without a body. Those were always the saddest - a forlorn rock pile lit by an empty flame. 

It hurts to remember, so he never tries to. He closes his mouth and his eyes and tries to forget. Eventually, he succeeds: no longer sees their faces, no longer hears their voices. It always leaves Mikkel feeling guilty, seeing that they were heroic people who deserved to have their memories preserved, but when he tries to apologize, he can’t remember their names. 

He tries not to dwell on those thoughts long after that. 

“I don’t think I do anything for the... betterment of the world anymore.” Mikkel confides with Sigrun one day, in hushed voices muffled by glass barriers. They’ve both seen their fair share of deaths and disasters, and know that it’s not something easily walked away from. “I just want to stop it from getting worse. Same is okay! Same is good. At least when all’s over and done, I know that-”

-

“-I’m okay.” Reynir manages.

Bjarni furrows his eyebrows. “You sure? Don’t look like it, buddy.”

Reynir hasn’t looked at a mirror in a long time, but he can probably imagine what he looks like: pale complexion, baggy eyes, stringy hair. He avoids his brother’s gaze, instead staring at the white tiled floor.

“Hey man. Uh,” Bjarni says, “I’m sorry, okay? After you left, Mom and Dad told me off big time. Said I encouraged you to run off by ‘exaggerating my tales of grandeur’ - their words, not mine - to make you want to run off or something. So sorry for that.” 

Reynir’s head snaps up at this, surprised. “Stop that! This isn’t your fault, you know it.” A pause, then: “Did you really exaggerating your stories though?” 

Bjarni crosses his arms, smug. “Nah. But stop moping around, alright? I’ve already got word that our parents are waiting for us in Reykjavik, so at least put on a smile for them? They’ve been worried sick.” 

Bjarni doesn’t see ghosts. Bjarni doesn’t know what it’s like to try to sleep, their whispers echoing in his mind. But Bjarni is his brother, his friend, his partner in crime. Despite everything, Reynir finds himself smiling at Bjarni’s hopeful face. Some things are different, and some things stay the same. 

“I’ve got some explaining to do, don’t I?” Reynir sighs, “The thing is, I’m not sure if I want Mom and Dad to see me as the same person anymore. It’s only been months, I know, but after this journey ate me up and spat me back out I feel like-”

-

“-I’ve changed,” Emil says.

His words come out in breathy gasps as he fights to regain control of his lungs. He had woken up from a particularly bad nightmare just minutes earlier. Emil never remembers the details of his night terrors, only that they involve gnashing teeth, pulsing flesh, the bloom of blood on skin, and that they started not long after he boarded the ship. 

The cot groans as he slumps against it, his heart beating frantically against his chest. Even after sleeping on sweat-soaked chairs, cold ground, and in trash cans, Emil still can’t get used to the terrible quality of the mattress beneath him. Some things still stay the same, he supposes. 

But he’s changed too, and the nightmares are a testament to that. Old Emil would still gripe about his lack of fancy clothing and a too-tight budget. Old Emil would dream about his eventual rise to fame as a hero of the Silent World. New Emil knows how to wash a uniform so all the troll blood scrubbed away and what it’s like to survive on nothing but candle stew. New Emil understands that in the end, there’s no such thing as heroes. 

He’s changed. His expedition to the Silent World changed him. 

And if he were to start the journey all over again, knowing everything would happen as it did, would he have gone through with it? 

Emil mulls over the question long and hard, staring at the ceiling and counting its many cracks. Eventually, he decides that yes, he would, because he simply can’t imagine a world without Mikkel’s steadiness, Reynir’s help, Sigrun’s enthusiasm; Lalli’s quiet support, his gradual acceptance. 

It was just the five of them out there in the Silent World, with only each other for company in the dangerous, untamed wilds. They had to work together to survive, and in doing so, they became -

-

-almost like family, Sigrun thinks.

Somehow, in less than a year, the poor sods grew on her more than some of her troops back home. There was something about being stuck together in the middle of the Silent World that did wonders to team bonding, apparently. 

Sigrun has several new scars - a cut on her cheek, a slash on her calf, a large bite-shaped mark on the inside of her arm - though she can’t find it in her to brag about them. Perhaps it was Mikkel’s terrible stitching because seriously, that man should not be within 20 feet of a suture. Or perhaps it was that fact that no matter how brazen the wound, it would never hurt as much as the ones that etched themselves inside her. 

She should be proud. Sigrun was most military trained crew member out of six, sent out into the wilderness with little food, supplies, and ammunition. Their survivor turnout is higher than most raids she experienced in Norway. And yet whenever Sigrun sleeps, her dreams show a familiar round face, her tufted hair gleaming with shards of broken promises. The truth is that the mission was a failure. Sigrun failed.

“I’m sorry, little pipsqueak,” she found herself murmuring to herself late one night when everybody else was asleep, “I should’ve...done more, I guess. Been less reckless. You would’ve loved Iceland, I think. Whenever the staff show me pictures of it, I think of you. The truth is-”

-

“-I miss you, Tuuri,” Lalli whispers.

Small zephyrs hum as they carry his words away, snaking through towering trunks of marshland trees. The pitkospuut planks wobbled precariously when he shifted, their small waves disturbing nearby water lilies. 

He sits there basking in the quiet. It feels different now, for some reason. The woods are the same, the sky is the same, the water is the same. Back then, Lalli would feel calmed by the atmosphere of silence his dreamspace brought him. Now, it just seems empty; incomplete. He finds himself missing the long nights spent on flat Danish countryside, the crackling thrum of a familiar engine, waking up in the strained morning light with golden strands stuck to his face. He’s come to expect them in a routinely manner almost like his job back in Keuruu. It was just a few months, but a few months could change a lot. 

Funny thing, he realises, how many aspects of himself he takes for granted until the day he loses them. 

Lalli allows his luonto out of his body for the time being. The ghostly lynx trills at him, following as he makes his way to the borders of his haven. There is a section of his barrier that’s weaker than the rest; it wavers slightly when he rests his palm on it. The grass here is still blackened from ghost-touch.

Tuuri wanted to experience something new. Tuuri paid the ultimate price. 

And after she left, Lalli continues paying for it. 

He idly twirls the water beneath his feet, watching the ripples ebb. In the beginning, he had blamed himself, blamed her. Now all he feels is a sense of resignation. There was Saimaa, there was Keuruu, there was that. Lalli had expected too much, and the gods had taken it away.

**Author's Note:**

> Bjarni is so fun to write. I probably made him a bit more...rowdy...than his comic persona but I couldn't stop, he's so fun to write. 
> 
> If it's any consolation, the SSSS crew has probably gained a lot too. It's just that I feel like they're not the type of people to acknowledge that.


End file.
